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"Where Yesterday Is Tomorrow"

"Dispatch War Rocket Ajax to bring back his body!"

With the new Clash of the Titans movie coming out this weekend, the cry has gone up around the Internets to "Release the Kraken!"

It's certainly one of the better rallying cries out there. It reminds me, though, of my favorite line from any movie, ever: "Dispatch War Rocket Ajax to bring back his body!" 

General Kala's command to her troops in the ridiculous 1980 Flash Gordon movie may not be as easy to work into conversation as "Release the Kraken," but it's a beautifully crafted sentence, perhaps the crown jewel of the screenplay. Not "send", but the harsh, no-nonsense dispatch. It's not just any old ship, it's a rocket -- one designed specifically for war. Ming the Merciless clearly has several of these beauties at his disposal, because Kala specifies that the Ajax should perform the job of bringing back Gordon's body. Why War Rocket Ajax? Were the others occupied with fighting off Prince Vultan's squadrons of Hawkmen? Or is the Ajax Ming's flagship, entrusted with high-priority missions like this one? God, so much story packed into that brief line.

It's even in the movie's theme song:

I sometimes think Queen is the ultimate geek band. But that's another post.

LAZEROIDS!!!

Lazeroids

LAZEROIDS -- a never-ending, massively multiplayer, peer-to-peer version of Asteroids -- was the Innovation category winner in August's Rails Rumble. 

An MMO of any early 1980s arcade game would get me excited, but Asteroids...erm. I have to admit that I'm very conflicted about Asteroids. I was terrible at it, and loathed and envied the smug kid at my arcade who  boasted that he could play the game "as long as I want, on one quarter." Someone needed to wipe the smirk off that punk's face, but it wasn't going to be me.

(via RWW)

Wizard of Wor video game, Midway Mfg. Co. (1980)

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via arcade-history.com

I was visiting my grandmother in Albany, Georgia one summer in the early 80s. One day, she had a lot of errands to run; so she gave me $20 for quarters and dropped me off at Aladdin's Castle arcade in the Albany Mall. I spent hours playing Wizard of Wor.

That was one of the best days of my teenage life.

Part of the game's immense appeal was that it talked: the Wizard regularly mocked and abused you, taunting you with his robotic "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" Arcade History's writeup of the game includes all 71 lines of the Wizard's dialogue.

(Thanks to http://www.videogamey.com for the link)